After its successful completion of the 1st Critical Foreign Language Education Promotion Project, the HUFS Center for Critical Foreign Language Education (CFLE, Director Lee Eun-Gu) was selected again to lead the 2nd project by the National Institute for International Education under the Ministry of Education. The five-year project that begins in 2022 will offer the five additional languages of Italian, Lao, Dutch, Kazakh, and Swedish.

CFLE was established under the aim of growing and expanding critical foreign languages (CFL) expertise, which is essential for entering into and conducting exchanges with strategically important regions, according to the Act on the Promotion of Education of Critical Foreign Languages and the Enforcement Decree thereof. Among the 20 critical foreign languages covered by this project, CFLE will take charge of education for 16 languages, with the five new ones added to the existing 11 languages (Mongolian, Swahili, Uzbek, Iranian, Indonesian-Malay, Turkish, Thai, Portuguese-Brazilian, Polish, Hungarian, and Hindi).

CFLE Director Lee said, “In the 2nd project, we will continue to expand CFL learning opportunities for the public and also create a multidisciplinary education environment where students majoring in these CFLs can take courses from different HUFS departments and colleges.” He also explained that CFLE will further expand its exchange programs with foreign universities and institutions, which have been severely reduced by the COVID-19 crisis, to seek collaboration in promoting CFL education at home and abroad.

Since 2018, CFLE has been focusing its efforts on strengthening HUFS’s undergraduate courses on multiple fronts, including developing standard CFL education courses, related materials and dictionaries, and fluency evaluation and certification systems and running various undergraduate language learning programs. In addition, it has been operating a range of programs to push the boundaries of education and promote public interest. These include basic language learning courses for ordinary citizens, a CFL learning program, special language lecture programs in partnership with external organizations, a K-MOOC development and operation program, and forums with the ambassadors of CFL-speaking nations to Korea. For the upcoming five-year project, it will fulfill its task of running various CFL education and translation services at the National Institute for International Education by enhancing qualitative aspects of the already developed research tasks on the basis of feedback and expanding CFL education for the
public on multiple fronts.